


Shear

by Kadigan



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 19:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kadigan/pseuds/Kadigan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony hates this kind of supervillain, has he mentioned that? They're complete incompetents, except when they're going after what he loves the most. Then, though -- <i>then</i> they can somehow do a hell of a lot of damage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Jadeo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/703763) by [Kadigan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kadigan/pseuds/Kadigan). 



> This story's first chapter was originally written in Spanish as a thank-you gift for Jimenush, who taught me Spanish fanfiction terminology. What you see here is not a strict translation; it's essentially the same story, but I'm a much better writer in English. The Spanish version was betaed by Jimenush, and then MountainRose gave the English a once-over.
> 
> Rated for strong language (in later chapters) and violence. Also, I've tried to do my homework, but I am not a doctor.
> 
> I don't own these characters or the universe they live in—I'm just borrowing them for a while. I promise to return them in approximately the same condition I found them. No, really. The scars will fade.

In. Out. In. Out. In— _don't choke don't choke don't choke_ —out. Pain.

Oh, God. He can't _breathe._

In. Out. In—this time he does choke, and agony crushes him down into red-gray darkness. His spine arches off the backplate with the force of it, helpless instinct curling him around the pain, and something _moves_ deep in his side.

Everything stays pretty gray for a while.

"...ony? Oh my God, Tony!" A familiar voice struggles through the haze. Slender hand on his good shoulder. He pries his eyes open. Blur of red hair... blue cloth... _Pepper._ "Tony, can you hear me?"

He can't get enough air to answer. She must take his feeble groan as encouragement, though, because her hand squeezes his shoulder gently. The attempt at comfort only jars his broken collarbones, his bad shoulder—his _chest—_

He'll realize, much later, that the gasping scream he just heard was his own.

...in... out... out... in... out... i- in...

When he can open his eyes again, the red smudge is closer, Pepper's voice right in his ear. She's murmuring his name, pleading with him. "...ear me, Tony? Oh God, I'm so sorry, _please—"_

"Pep." The word is voiceless, barely more than a breath, and still it scrapes his throat raw. He tries to lift his good hand.

Huff of breath on his face. Pepper's head drops a few inches. "Oh, thank God," she gasps. Warm, trembling fingers wrap around his hand, comb gingerly through his hair. "We're going to get you out of here, okay? You're going to be fine."

Before he can answer, though, he's suddenly wrapped up in the scent of Pepper as she folds herself down over him, cradling his head in her hands. "Why did you _do_ that, you idiot? You could've been killed!"

Speaking takes a Herculean effort, but it's worth it. "Better me than you," he rasps.

If that just makes her swear at him... well, that's worth it too.

\---  
\------  
\---


	2. Chapter 2

And today started out so _well,_ too.

He kind of likes Seattle, he has to admit. It’s no beach town, sure, but he’s got a bit of a soft spot for the landmarks. (The current Tacoma Narrows Bridge brings back fond memories. Not that he’d ever admit it.) Nice coffee, too. He and Pepper had breakfast this morning at a neon-lit kiosk on Broadway, and the cappuccino was good enough to _savor_ instead of just gulping it down for the caffeine. Didn’t stop him ordering three, but that’s just fueling up.

More to the point, though, he really likes the SI facilities in Seattle. He rebuilt the corporate campus about five years back, so the manufacturing and office buildings alike are shiny new and very _him._ Sleek concrete, blue glass, brushed steel -- yeah, baby. It’s almost two percent as sexy as what’s inside. The R &D labs are tricked out, and he’s got some damn good people ticking away out here.

Which is why he let Pepper drag him along in the first place. Not that he’s got _anything_ against spending more time with Pep, no sir, no way; whether at home in Malibu or in some hotel, when he wakes up to the spill of red hair on his pillow he always thinks _I don’t deserve you._ Site inspections, though, those he can live without. He’s trying to ease into taking a more active hand on SI’s reins, yeah, but that doesn’t mean he has time for meticulous dissection of every SI installation west of Denver. He went with Pep on the first day, and things looked good, so she can handle the upstairs today. Right, Pep? Divide and conquer, she’ll look over the managers’ shoulders, he’ll make sure R &D’s up to no good. Yeah, they’ve got this; love you, honey. She glares fondly after him as he disappears toward the main lab, Happy in tow.

Candyland beckons. He steps through the big glass doors and grins, clapping his hands. A startled intern pops up from behind a car body and actually brains himself on the dangling engine block; the more seasoned engineers are less jittery, even when the Boss steps onto their turf. “Somebody get the kid an ice pack? Yeah, thanks.

“Okay, minions.” He surveys the equipment-forested expanse of his domain, resisting the urge to rub his hands together with glee. “Show me what you’ve got.”

They do.

It’s a pretty entertaining afternoon, bouncing from project to project, hanging over people’s shoulders and gauging their excitement-to-annoyance-to-intimidation ratios as he dissects their work. Just as he hoped, they’ve got it going _on_ in here. The kid’s car runs on a fuel cell with a palladium catalyst derived from some of his arc-tech experiments; it gets an equivalent two hundred miles to the gallon, which isn’t half bad for intern work. Petersen’s got an industrial coolant whose efficiency he’s nudged up and up until even Tony’s kind of impressed by how close it skims the theoretical limits. Sharma and her crew are building computers out of cement, which isn’t half as ridiculous as it sounds once you apply it to their existing work on smart buildings.

And hoo boy, he knew there was a reason he hired this Winters lady. She’s gonna revolutionize the power grid before she’s forty, he’d bet her salary on it. (Never mind that he kinda already did.) The sims she’s got running here, they are things of beauty, from the results she’s getting right down to the elegant flourishes in their base code.

Wrapped up as he is in grinning at her tidy little scripts, he thinks he can be forgiven for ignoring the first crash. It sounded a lot like a dropped engine, and it’s not like he’d put it past the intern. Kid’s smart, but he’s got some work to do on those butterfingers of his.

The second crash, though -- that one’s a lot harder to miss, what with the flying glass that just about takes Winters’ head off.

Tony whips around to face the doors, hand raised in a well-trained reflexive gesture... and what the _fuck._ Bunch of guys in -- in skinny jeans and hipster T-shirts. Aiming a giant fuckoff _ray gun_ through the shattered ruin of R &D's front doors. And is the big muscley one _cackling?_

"Surrender now, Iron Man! You’ve done this city enough damage! We know Stark Industries masterminded the tunnel viaduct replacement! We tried petitions, we tried voter initiatives, now we try force! Run light rail through THIS!"

Yep. He's cackling.

Beside him, Winters is half-crouched in the shelter of her workstation. Her eyes are huge, but her hands are steady. Without turning his body or taking his eyes off Muscles, who's still monologuing in front of him, he does his best to enunciate through unmoving lips: "Winters. Evacuate the building -- Ember situation." Out of the corner of his eye, he can just make out her quick nod. She shuffles out of his view, moving low and quiet behind the desk.

“-- can’t pull the wool over our eyes forever! Tim Eyman watches you sleep! Guns don’t kill people, _bicycles_ do! --”

On his other side -- oh thank fuck, Happy's right here with the suitcase suit. "Hap. When I say go, throw me the Suit. Then help Winters."

“Got it, Boss.” Keeping mostly hidden behind the counter, Happy unlocks his cuff and balances the case between his hands. “Ready.”

“--so this is _it!”_ Muscles plants his feet with two ominous, ceiling-rattling stomps, and bares a mouthful of weirdly greenish teeth. Oh, hell, another gamma case? Just what the world needed. Bruce’ll have a shitfit. “You’re going _down,_ Iron Man.”

“Yeah,” Tony snaps back, “and Portland's about ready to crown you top of the heap... _Hap, go!”_

Hap goes. Tony snatches the briefcase out of the air and snaps its handles apart in a _chunk-whirr_ of unfolding machinery, while Happy bolts back towards Winters and the other civilians. They’re all on Tony’s right, so he dives backwards and to his left, buying himself a little space and time to let the Suit self-assemble.

He can already tell he’s gonna need every second. Muscles out-and-out _roars,_ pounding towards him like -- well, like an angry Hulk, which is looking more and more like an unfortunately appropriate comparison -- and leaving cratered footprints in the cement floor. Tony backpedals hard, but the half-formed Suit is heavy without its servos and repulsors in place, and he can’t quite keep far enough away --

Muscles swipes out hard, and a fist like a forty-pound sledge rips half of the Suit clean off Tony’s side.

“Shit!” Tony flings himself sideways, in the opposite direction from the sparking, rattling fragments of his armor. Muscles didn’t get all of it, though: just as Tony hits the floor, the vambraces lock shut around his arms. The gamma nutjob is pounding toward him, he’s gotta buy some time, what can he --

Oh. Hello there, dangling engine block.

He grabs the kid’s electric engine by its camshaft and pivots it on its chains, slinging it back and straight around into Muscles’ face. It connects with an almighty crash, and Muscles drops like a felled log.

That’ll buy him a few seconds, at least. Long enough to take inventory. The Suit’s finished closing; it’s badly damaged, and he’s pretty sure he can feel it buzzing in a few places, but there’s as much here as there’s going to be. He’s got most of the inner structure that underlies the Suit, but the asshat on the floor wrecked a lot of the actual armor; he’s got the helmet, both gauntlets, and most of the chest- and abdominal plates, but nothing below the thighs or above the elbows. He’s grounded without the jetboots, and a lot clumsier than he’d like to be… but he still has JARVIS in his HUD, his palm repulsors and unibeam, and a lot of auxiliary weaponry besides.

He can work with this. The asshole in front of him broke into Tony’s building, threatened his people, and smashed down on his beautiful R&D labs, all in the name of some kind of -- of Seattle-preservationist weirdness, he doesn't even know. Tony’s pissed-off enough to do a lot of damage with a lot less.

Muscles starts picking himself up off the floor, snarling in Tony’s general direction, and Tony raises both palms. His repulsors charge. His lips skin back in a savage grin.

“C’mere, you,” he purrs, and slams Muscles square-on with a double blast of lethal light.

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\------  
\---


End file.
